by Victor Milán
"You answer your own question," the Shadowed One said. "If you truly doubted my words, you would leap to slay me, despite knowing that my operatives wait all around and in the rafters above your heads. For you are true sons of the Dragon, who would not hesitate to sacrifice your lives to bring down one who dared falsely accuse the Coordinator.
"But you do nothing. And that is because in your hara, in the center of you, you know the truth of what I say. You've known it for a long time, though you would not face it."
Hiraoke Toyama dropped to his knees. "He's right," the oyabun of Dieron said. "For too long we've hidden behind the myth that Th—that the Coordinator was being misled by evil advisors. We can hide no longer. The evil lies at the very core."
Toyama looked at the Shadowed One, tear tracks gleaming down his grief-ravaged cheeks. "What can we do?"
"Theodore and his reforms are a cancer, eating away at the Combine from within," the figure said. "You must act quickly and decisively to expunge that cancer before it is too late. Opportunity awaits us in the forthcoming Celebration of the Coordinator's Birth. "And I will help."
PART 1
Origami
The world is a vast temple dedicated to Discord.
—Voltaire
1
DropShip Uyeshiba, Approach Vector
Luthien System
Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine
18 June 3058
With a stuttering crash like God's own jackhammer the short-range missile volley slammed into the T-IT-N1M Grand Titan.
The mammoth 'Mech had left a trail of shattered and blazing enemy machines behind it. Yet already it was Hearing the end of its savage run. Its awesome Durallex Heavy armor had been penetrated in a dozen places, burned through by energy weapons or peeled back from explosive hits. Its left arm was gone, its shoulder actuator a gaping wound bleeding smoke and sparks. The Titan's expendables were long since expended, but somehow it had kept driving single-mindedly toward its destination, as if held upright solely by its pilot's determination.
The SRM salvo was just too much. Three missiles struck its right hip and blew off its leg. Like a felled forest giant, the Titan toppled forward in slow-motion.
But its pilot was not to be turned aside. With a final thrust by the 'Mech's remaining leg he hurled the machine forward. Its massive armored head smashed through the yellow stone facade of the sinister Dragon's Claw Palace.
Inside the palace, guards in ninja black, faces hidden behind the unmistakable red visors of the Draconis Combine Elite Strike Teams, scattered away from the avalanche of masonry and metal. Before they could recover, a hatch popped open beside the anti-missile system mounted in the BattleMech's head. A curled-up figure shot out like a cannonball, bowling over a pair of guards.
The figure uncoiled to its feet. It was a young man dressed in a short, sleeveless black bodysuit, with black slippers on his feet. Dark hair hung in a face that was a striking mixture of Chinese and Western. Black-almond eyes flashed.
A DEST guard struck at the young man overhand with a ninjato. The young man danced back; the blade hissed down, missing him by millimeters. The commando advanced, slashing diagonally downward, left to right, right to left. The young man retreated, ducked to the side, then seized the swordsman's right wrist as the second cut missed. He snapped a backfist into the visored face and as the DEST man's head whipped back, the young man yanked hard on the trapped wrist, locking out the elbow, which he broke with a left forearm smash. Then he plucked the sword from the man's hand and hacked him down with it.
Not a moment too soon. A half-dozen guards were closing on him from all directions, swords naked in gloved hands. He passed among them like a steel-edged whirlwind, striking them down without slowing.
From an upper gallery, a flashing of laser fire. The young man hurled himself into a forward roll to avoid the cracking beams that pitted the marble floor at his slippered feet. He somersaulted through a high-arched doorway.
A door slammed behind him with titanic finality. He turned, took in the fact that he was trapped, spun back, ninjato held ready.
He was in a domed chamber rising four stories overhead, pillars and galleries of yellow stone. Across the room, on a dais before a mirrored wall, sat an old man in a wheelchair. His shrunken body was swaddled in blankets. His head, shaven to a snow-white topknot, slumped listlessly to one side. He stirred, raised his head to peer at the intruder through round-lensed spectacles.
"And so you have come," he said in a quavering voice. "I knew my guards would not be able to stop you. You have what you want now: No one will interrupt us. It is just you and a crippled old man."
"So you are the Dragon's Claw." The young man looked from the invalid to the sword in his hand. He cast the weapon away.
"I don't need this," he said. "I don't like the idea of doing harm to an invalid, but justice must be served. Your time has come, spymaster."
Withered lips smiled. "Your scruples do you honor, David Lung. But you need shed no tears on my account. While it is true that age and sickness have robbed my limbs of their power—"
He threw back the blankets. Body, arms, and legs were encased in a powered exoskeleton of gleaming alloy. He flung forth his arms and rose three meters in the air on roaring jets.
"—the Dragon's technology has given me back all that I've lost, and more." He too wore a black bodysuit, but with a yellow claw glowing on the breast.
"Technology you have no right to!" David Lung returned defiantly. "You're a traitor to your own people as well as an enemy of mine!"
The spymaster's laughter rang. "My people are fools. They have grown weak, and their backbones have atrophied." He settled on to the marble floor to stand facing his opponent with legs braced wide. "The Dragon will return to the path of conquest. I shall lay all the Inner Sphere as a tribute at His clawed feet. The weakling Coordinator will fall, and after him the Federated Commonwealth. Prepare to die, interloper!"
David dropped into a wary fighting stance. The Dragon's Claw stood, apparently relaxed, metal-reinforced arms hanging flexed by his sides. He seemingly invited attack, yet was prepared to defend himself—if his powered exoskeleton lent him sufficient quickness.
Cautiously the young man advanced counterclockwise, bringing him to the Dragon Claw's left side. The aged spy-master did not move, only stood watching him with a bemused half-smile on his still-bespectacled face. When the young avenger was at the very verge of his peripheral vision, about to move behind him, he moved with blurring speed, sidestepping and driving a side kick into David's ribcage right below his guard.
David flew back and struck a carven wooden pillar. As he fought to pull air back into his lungs, the Dragon's Claw advanced with measured steps, unhurried, smiling benignly.
The young man lashed out with his black-slippered right foot. The spymaster pivoted slightly and shifted stance to bring one of the flat curved braces that upheld his ribcage into the front kick's way. David struck immediately with his right fist, jabbing his opponent twice in the face, snapping his head back so that his scalplock whipped like a pennon in the breeze.
The older man stepped back, touched his nose, scowled as he saw blood scarlet on his fingers. David danced toward him, feinted another jab for the face, then wheeled to launch a spinning back kick for the solar plexus.
The Dragon's Claw stepped back with his right foot, pivoting his body out of range of the kick. His left hand flashed down and seized the younger man's ankle. With a caw of triumph he flung David Lung across the chamber to slam into a wall.
David picked himself up to a crouch, shaking his head as if to clear it. The spymaster launched himself in a jet-assisted jump, then came down with steel-shod feet aimed for the young man's skull.
But David was not as badly stunned as he seemed. He rolled away at the last instant. The metal soles of his enemy's powered skeleton struck sparks'from the flagstone.
David started to come to his feet, then hurled himself forward as the spyma
ster turned, sweeping the metal man's legs out from under him with the backs of his young calves. The Dragon's Claw fell with a mighty clang. David sprang to his feet, kicked the Dragon's Claw in the face as the spy-master fought to rise.
With a roar the Dragon's Claw's leg-jets ignited, sending him skittering across the floor in a shower of sparks. David stared, then came somersaulting toward him.
Using jets mounted in the shoulders of his exoskeleton, the Dragon's Claw thrust himself upright as David landed confronting him. He had lost his spectacles. David slammed a storm of punches, left and right chained in blinding succession, into the spymaster's face.
The spymaster roared, stepped back. David struck for his face again. The Dragon's Claw caught the fist in his left hand, twisted. David groaned as his elbow joint locked out. The spymaster kept applying torque, so that it seemed David must drop to the floor or suffer damage to his right elbow or shoulder. Instead he brought his left foot up and around in a sweeping crescent kick that knocked the spy-master's hand away.
He followed with a spinning straight-legged kick that slammed the sword of his right foot against the side of the spymaster's jaw. The Dragon's Claw's head snapped around, but his exoskeleton's gyros kept him from falling. He roared in anger and pain and brought his right forearm slamming down toward the top of David's head.
The younger man managed to jerk his head aside and take the blow on the shoulder. Its force drove him to his knees, blinking at the pain. The Dragon's Claw aimed a straight punch at his face, but David weaved his head to the side, evading it.
With a sinister snick, three long steel claws snapped from the armor at the back of the spymaster's fist. He swiped bearlike at the younger man's head. David rolled to the side, but when he came up to his feet three bloody grooves had been gashed in his handsome face.
The Dragon's Claw advanced on him, slashing with his artificial claw. David tried backing away, but the older man, aided by his powered exoskeleton, moved with unnatural quickness, laying open the skin of David's belly.
Desperately David closed into the next stroke, seized the spymaster by the arm and threw him over his shoulder. Away the older man went skidding across the floor again. As David sprang for him, his jets once again righted him. He gathered his augmented legs beneath him and jumped straight up.
David took a deep breath, summoned his ch'i, and jumped with the old man—straight up, far higher than a normal man could leap, all the while trading blows and blocks with the Dragon's Claw. They landed. David leapt once again, straight up, knocked the spymaster's shaven head with a looping outward kick, then a flying crescent kick.
The Dragon's Claw bellowed, charged at David, lashing out furiously. David gave ground, trying to guide the other man's attacks past him with slap-blocks, not daring to block him directly for fear the exoskeleton would snap the bones of his forearm. His back fetched up against an ornamental wooden pillar. The spymaster cried out triumphantly and thrust his claw straight for the young man's throat.
David dodged sideways. The claw struck deep into the carved and painted wood and stuck fast.
Crying out in anger, the Dragon's Claw tugged on his trapped arm. All the power of his metal skeleton was not enough to free it. David slipped behind him and began jack-hammering punches into the Claw's kidneys, between the curving armor plates.
The Dragon's Claw smashed his left arm across his body, snapping off the deeply-bedded spike. Then he spun, catching David in the face with a savage backhand that sent the young man flying through the air.
David struck on his tailbone, skidded, reeled to his feet. The spymaster was on him, burying the steel-capped point of his toe in the younger man's belly. David doubled. The spymaster punched him in the face, straightening him up for a side kick to the gut that bent him over again, then performed a spinning back kick that caught him in the side of the face and launched him away once more, tendrils of blood trailing from his mouth.
"Your kung-fu is good," the Dragon's Claw said, stalking towards the bloodied young man for the kill, "but you have no chance against me. The Dragon shall reign triumphant! The Inner Sphere shall be mine."
David Lung lay propped on his elbow. He shook blood droplets from his eyes, spat out blood. He felt as if a thousand workmen had been pounding him with sledgehammers.
He fought to control his breath, breathing from the diaphragm, drawing air in through the nose, expelling air through the mouth. And from all around him, it seemed, he felt fresh energy flowing into him: his ch'i.
Step by clanking step, his nemesis came closer. David felt the energy accrete within him as if each molecule of air were made of fire, until it achieved critical mass at the pit of his belly, until it burst like a bomb—
The Dragon's Claw was standing over him like a colossus, legs braced wide. "Prepare yourself, David Lung," he said, raising both hands above his head, interlocked for the killing blow.
David came off the floor as if he were the one propelled by rockets. He uttered a cry that shook the Palace to its foundation as he drove his fist with all the nova fury within him against the spymaster's sternum.
Such a blow might normally collapse the ribcage and drive broken ends of bone through the heart beneath—were it not for the Dragon Claw's armor plate. But this was not a normal blow. It was a special, focused blow. Its energy— David's ch'i—was transmitted through the metal, through bone and meat to deep within.
Eyes starting from his head, saliva and gobbling sounds spilling from his mouth, the Dragon's Claw staggered back. His limbs trembled uncontrollably. And then, as if his heart had been replaced by a fusion bottle, and David's mystic blow had breached it, yellow light vomited from the spy-master's mouth and shot from his eyeholes.
As David hurled himself backwards, the Dragon's Claw exploded in flame and sundered flesh.
Shortly thereafter David found himself lurching down the broad steps of Claw Palace. Behind him, flame and black smoke began to lick from the haughty yellow edifice.
And before the battered but victorious young man sprang up the white letters:
EXIT THE DRAGON
A RUN RUN SHAWXLIX PRODUCTION
Cheers, wolf-cries, and wild clapping filled the holotheater. The lights came up in the terraced compartment deep in the guts of the Overlord Class DropShip Uyeshiba, two days from the Combine capital of Luthien, washing out "David Lung" and the doomed palace in the FedCom holovid the audience had been watching so avidly.
Lieutenant Senior Grade Cassie Suthorn unhooked the bungee that held her floating in place, clasped her hands, arched her back, and stretched like a cat. Around her, several dozen of Camacho's Caballeros—men and women of the mercenary Seventeenth Recon Regiment—began doing likewise. The regiment was on its way to Luthien for the Coordinator's Birthday, a three-day celebration held every year. They'd been invited in honor of their successful defeat of renegade Combine military units and the outlawed Black Dragon Society on Towne, saving face for Theodore Kurita, who did not want to endanger his non-aggression pact with the Davions now that everyone needed to unite in order to stand fast against the Clans. Riding high and proud in their 'Mechs, they would pass in review for Teddy the K himself in a great military show of might organized just for the occasion.
"What about that Johnny Tchang?" Misty Saavedra asked. She was a diminutive MechWarrior from Kali Mac-Dougall's old Bronco Company. She was just beginning to get back some of the ebullience she'd lost after her best friend Mariposa Esposito was killed by a terrorist truck bomb on Towne, which they had gratefully left behind them several weeks before. She was doing her best to keep off the weight she'd dropped at the same time, and was succeeding so far. "Hijo la, he's a dream!"
"They say he's going to be on Luthien for the celebration," said Captain Angela Torres breathily. The captain, who amply lived up to her callsign "Vanity," was not known as an aficionada of action flicks. "I can't wait to meet him."
"You and every other female on the planet," remarked Kali MacDougall.
"He's not so tough," said Cowboy Payson, extending to his full rangy length in a vertical stretch. "I could take him."
"You and what 'Mech battalion?" Raven O'Connor— ash-blond and acerbic—asked.
"No battalion," Cowboy said with a smirk. "Just me and my little ol' Yellowjacket." The Wasp he was referring to was his 'Mech.
"Don't be too sure, cuate," Jesse James Leyva said, slapping him on the shoulder and setting him spinning. "He might turn out to be like our little Cassie here, and take you out anyway."
Cassie's mouth tightened. The thought that a mere actor—even one who was a credible martial artist—could take down BattleMechs afoot the way she could was ludicrous enough to annoy her. Slightly.
"And what does Lieutenant Suthorn think?" Vanity asked ingenuously. "She's our little expert on all this bare-handed rolling-around, after all."
Controlling the urge to flip her off—Vanity behaved poisonously to every reasonably attractive female who came within eyeshot—Cassie said, "He's very pretty—his style, I mean. But it's not realistic. You couldn't really do most of that stuff. Not and expect to survive, anyway."
Cowboy clamped both hands on his chest in a shot-through-the-heart gesture. "I don't want to hear about it! Cassie, ain't you got any romance in your soul?"
"Not where you're concerned, Cowboy."
From across the half-lit compartment Kali caught Cassie's eye, winked and mouthed the words good job. Cassie's mouth tightened involuntarily. She was glad to see her friend show a flash of the easy humor that once was as much a part of her as her long-legged showgirl looks—not to mention a lot more indicative of who she really was. But it reminded her of how different Kali had become since her terrible experiences on Towne. The Seventeenth may have won the war, but Kali had been abused and raped, and that would take a long time healing.